


Apocrypha

by Ajaxthegreat



Series: Annihilation [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Again, Gratuitous Metaphor, M/M, homoeroticism in nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:31:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17417342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ajaxthegreat/pseuds/Ajaxthegreat
Summary: It is instantaneous. He feels a thread wrap itself around his own throat and the man’s outstretched hand.Or, Annihilation, from Erwin’s perspective.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LostCauses (Anteros)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anteros/gifts).



> This happened because Lost commissioned 4K words of Annihilation from Erwin’s POV, and it was sort of devastating to write. In my head I called it The Book of Erwin, hence the religious title.  
> Lost, thank you.  
> Ps: Because it’s a rehashing of Annihilation, it’s really meant to be read after.

He does not expect it to end this way, but he does expect it to end.

He’s been waiting for it for months, for years. Since he got back from the war, dragging half his mind through the dirt and hoping the other half would catch up. He is almost relieved when the cities break down and he takes off into the woods.  

It rains.

The rain eats the world.

He feels thankful, somehow, afterwards. Not for being alive – that feels almost cruel – but for the clear sky after the rain, for the melted twists of dead trees and the tiny little shoots of bright green that struggle out of them.

He is alone, finally.

The world goes from being choked and purple and crowded to being clean and clear, like a baptism. He cannot even find it in himself to mourn the hundreds of thousands of dead. 

Something is broken in him, he thinks, and he looks for higher ground. 

It is months before he finds the untouched green woods, and the clearing, and the Tower. Overturned, rusted, but taller than the trees. 

He finds - 

He - 

Everything slows and then stops all at once. 

There is a man standing on the Tower, with pale skin and dark, dark hair, holding a knife in one scarred hand and Erwin’s entire beating heart in the other.

_ Erwin,  _ he thinks, looking at the rise and fall of the man’s chest.  _ That’s my name.  _

The man says nothing, just stands there and gives Erwin back his humanity by mere proximity, presence quiet and obviously, immeasurably dangerous.

Erwin feels the earth tilt under his feet.

The man’s eyes are the sort of incomprehensible color that’s only ever mentioned in descriptions of horrors and God. 

It is instantaneous. He feels a thread wrap itself around his own throat and the man’s outstretched hand.    


It takes weeks for the man to speak, and the first thing he does is ask Erwin’s name. Erwin gives it to him carelessly, recklessly, eyes going to the wet ground instead of the dark curl of the man’s hair on the back of his neck. He doesn’t recognize his own voice when he speaks. 

He finds himself staring at the man across the fire, leaning so far towards him he is in danger of burning himself. He clears his throat. His hands are shaking.

“So.”

His voice cracks. The man doesn’t look up, impossible god-colored eyes on the rabbit he’s searing over the flame.

“You never told me your name.”

The man doesn’t respond, just opens his mouth to eat, and the white flash of his teeth moves Erwin’s chest so profoundly he fears he will be sick.

He tries a few more times to get the man to speak, just for the sound of his low, even voice, but mostly he fails. Finally, he says with his heart in his throat, “I don’t know where you sleep-”

The man’s eyes snap up to Erwin’s face and Erwin looks down at his own hands, tries to calm his thundering heart, “But you should sleep here.”

There is a moment of all-consuming terror when the man gets up and leaves, but then he’s back, settling with his back to Erwin, and then he’s speaking into the silent woods and the crackling fire:

“Levi.”

Oh. Yes. Of course.

Erwin’s humanity seeps a little further into his chest.

“Hello, Levi.”

 

Levi stays.

The Tower becomes the center of the world, and Erwin dreams every single night of dark, dark hair and that single flash of teeth.

He cannot continue like this. He can feel the thread connecting him to Levi tightening dangerously around his throat, so he decides to build a radio.

He lays out pieces for weeks, for months, planning in his head, and then Levi tries to kill him.

It’s dark, the middle of the night on a New Moon, and Erwin wakes from a dead sleep to the cold silver of Levi’s eyes in the starlight and the inconsequential press of a knife on his throat.

He recognizes it, the look on Levi’s face. He’s dreaming. Erwin’s body doesn’t even react to the knife, just stills utterly under Levi’s hands. His heart slows.

“Levi,” he says, and it skins him alive, the feeling of whispering his name into the dark like this. The knife is nothing, nothing compared to the look in his eyes. Like a lantern that’s been blown out. It freezes every cell in Erwin’s body.

“Levi, wake up.”

A flicker of something crosses Levi’s perfect face, a spark, and Erwin’s heart restarts in his chest.

“Levi, wake up, it’s just me, it’s just me.”

Levi’s eyes go from the dead flat color of hammered silver to something alive and liquid again, and Erwin feels himself gasp in relief before Levi’s even pulled the knife away from his throat.

“Fuck,” Levi hisses, body still pressed hot against Erwin’s, “Fuck.”

Erwin’s mind skids to a halt and he holds his hands up in front of him to keep himself from grabbing Levi’s hips and –

He hears himself ask, “Are you alright?”

Levi looks at him like he’s insane, but his eyes are fixed solely on the tiny cut he’s made on Erwin’s neck.

“Am  _ I  _ alright?” Levi says, derisive. The weak starlight and the dying coals illuminate only parts of him: his hands, the curve of his neck, the straight black slick of his hair against his cheek. Levi’s low voice is rough and it feels like it’s pulling at Erwin’s clothes when he says, “I just almost fucking killed you.” 

Erwin laughs, makes some comment about how he’s  _ had worse _ , refuses to think about the war, and then Levi’s eyes are on him. 

He feels it painfully, then. The magnetic pull of him. He sees it, too, that Levi feels the same. His whole body seizes up with heat and possibility, and then Levi’s expression shutters horribly and he turns away.

He finally pockets the knife. Some distant unkillable part of Erwin’s reactionary mind relaxes.

He dreams of him for long stretches, hours and hours at a time every night, but when he wakes the dreams are always just out of reach. 

Levi orbits the tower like a satellite, going out to hunt or walk or set traps and then coming back like a breath of air. It makes Erwin’s chest seize painfully every time he sees that white flash of pale skin coming out of the soft dark of the forest. 

He figures out the radio. He’s always been good with engineering. 

His hands shake, when the time comes to test it. Levi’s don’t. His voice is low and soft and his hands are perfectly steady, and Erwin can hear the reverence in his own voice when he speaks to him but he is powerless to stop it. 

Levi mentions something about cracking safes at 12 years old, and the deep, unknowable well of him rises up and threatens to drown Erwin alive. He is so impossible to understand, and yet Erwin feels like they already know each other so deeply. 

It hurts, when he looks at him. There is something so immeasurably sad and afraid inside him, and Erwin can see how easily he has covered it with violence and edges. It hurts.

There is a transmission. Erwin’s heartbeat starts sprinting in his ribs. Levi’s hands still do not shake. Something about it gives Erwin such a pang of pain, an almost shocking realization of _ I know nothing about you _ and he has to close his eyes.  

A voice pulls him out of his thoughts, not the one he expects. 

“Is this – fuck – shit, we hear you, we hear you transmitting, fuck, um. Where, um. Where are you?”

Erwin’s breath leaves his body. His heart stops beating all together. A wild, uncontainable joy lurches through his chest and he grabs Levi’s beautiful face in his hands and kisses him on the mouth. 

For the way he looks - his eyes and his stance and his body and his voice, all so painfully hard - Levi’s skin is almost unbearably soft. Erwin’s hands tingle with it. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingers. 

Levi tastes like silver, like licking a knife - sharp and metallic and clean. He is utterly still under Erwin’s hands, and Erwin’s sprinting, ecstatic mind comes to a grinding halt. 

He is  _ utterly still  _ under Erwin’s hands. 

Erwin pulls away abruptly, shame burning in his throat and his stomach. Levi’s expression is completely closed, impenetrable, like a bank safe.    
Erwin doesn’t try it again. His cheeks burn, shame and regret and squirming awful want all twisted up in his chest. 

“Sorry,” he says, dizzy with guilt. His mind is stuck on the way Levi had been so unmoving against him, replaying it over and over again. “That was. Inappropriate.” 

They speak to Control. Erwin’s whole world expands, adjusts, and he looks out over the tops of the quiet trees to the endless indigo sky and thinks,  _ we are not alone anymore. _ He is oddly disappointed. 

Levi says something absurd, something like  _ shitchrist,  _ and the tone of his voice is so legitimately awed that Erwin feels a hysterical bubble of laughter force its way out of his chest.

The look on Levi’s face is something that Erwin will dream about until he dies. 

In the morning, Erwin packs. The sun is slow and gold and it stains the sky pink and orange on one side and a cold, grey blue on the other. There is still a mist clinging to the trees, not quite tall enough to reach him on the tower. 

Levi comes sprinting into the clearing, tension radiating from every line of his body. 

“We have to go. Now.” 

Erwin doesn’t ask. He simply takes in the set of Levi’s shoulders and nods. 

He stops at the edge of the woods. 

Erwin can’t help it. He asks, “What?” 

Levi looks at him like he’s insane. “You don’t feel that?” 

Erwin’s blood freezes. He feels nothing. Levi’s body is one long tense line and he hovers there, like a fox stopping misstep when it sees a wolf. 

_ What do you feel?  _

That well of ways he does not understand Levi opens up in front of Erwin again. 

_ Who are you?  _

Levi’s knife is in his hand. He’s playing it cool, but there is a terror under his skin that Erwin can almost smell. He takes out his gun. 

He trusts Levi so deeply, so inexplicably, that when he sees the body he isn’t even surprised. 

They talk. A prion disease. Erwin’s stomach turns. 

Cannibals. 

Levi bends and picks up a sword, and something flashes so deep in Erwin’s mind he cannot identify it. It feels like a bolt of lightning behind him, where he can’t turn to see it. Levi’s hand grips the sword and Erwin thinks, unbidden and unexplainable,  _ You should have two. _

It is odd, this sense he sometimes gets about Levi.  He tries his best to ignore it. It hurts him, and he cannot explain it, and he thinks it might be a sign of an obsession that is not safe or fair to the only other living person he has seen in years, and so he crushes it with everything he has. 

They walk. Control leads them. 

The woods are made for Levi. The bark of the trees is rich and dark and smells painfully good, and it reminds Erwin so viscerally of Levi’s hair that he finds himself clenching his jaw for hours without speaking. 

Everything feels so wonderfully clear: the air is so startling Erwin feels like they are moving through it faster than before, like it’s so clean it’s carrying them. The ground is covered in dark earth and millions of tiny bright green shoots, stretching up like little hands. 

They find a child. It quiets them both. They talk of things Erwin would rather not think about, but he can’t help offering parts of himself to Levi. 

“May I ask you a question, Levi?” 

It sears him to his toes, speaking Levi’s name. He feels it again, like a flash of lightning just behind him. 

Levi’s face twists like he’s in pain when Erwin says his name, and for a moment, Erwin understands. Then he puts it away. 

They talk of Levi’s past, which Erwin feels so terribly, frighteningly blessed to know. He mentions that he was an arms dealer, and Erwin nods, unsurprised. He mentions that he was an art thief, and Erwin starts violently, cheeks flushing. 

Levi seems to be aware that this is a piece of himself that is deeper than he intended to offer. He pulls into himself like a flower in the desert, expression shuttering into that flat, hammered silver. Erwin selfishly says his name again, just to hear it. 

Levi turns his back to him and says nothing. 

They find the Base. It is dark and the ceilings are low and it smells like mold and dust, but Levi’s eyes are an impossible color in the light of the torch. The rest doesn’t matter at all. 

Erwin offers Levi a bottle of whiskey that he thinks fate must have rolled into that dusty corner with her own hands. They drink it recklessly fast. 

Erwin’s head spins and he cannot take his eyes off the flush on Levi’s cheeks, the way he’s sprawled almost lazily against the wall across from him. His skin looks so soft. 

“Navy, sort of,” Levi murmurs, eyes almost dreamy on Erwin’s face. Erwin’s battered heart lurches in his chest again. 

Levi comes closer. He sits next to Erwin with a huff, shrugs and says  _ too far.  _ Their shoulders are so close that Erwin could make them touch if he took a deep enough breath. 

He doesn’t. He hardly breathes at all. 

Erwin mentions Icarus, drunk and trying to distract himself from Levi’s proximity, and Levi surprises him, like he always does. 

Levi tells him about Icarus.

Levi says, “He was in love with Apollo,” and every nerve in Erwin’s whole body turns toward him and freezes. 

“Explain,” he breathes, clinging to a scant, impossible hope. The whiskey warms everything between them, even the air.

Levi talks. Every word that he speaks leaves Erwin with less breath in his lungs. The look in Levi’s eyes is something that Erwin didn’t even dare to dream about. 

“Somethin’ about loving a person capable of destroying you.” 

It’s impossible to ignore now, the way Levi’s looking at him. The tone of his voice. It’s impossible to mistake what he’s talking about. Erwin’s heart lurches and then flips over. 

In the dim light of the base Levi’s hair is so dark it looks blue. His skin glows like the moon, stark and pale against the dark curve of his eyelashes and the sharp shadowed edge of his cheekbone. He is so unbelievably beautiful that Erwin can hardly stand to look at him. 

He thinks of all the time they have spent near each other, and of the countless nights when he’d laid curled on his side, unable to sleep, feverishly watching the rise and fall of Levi’s chest while he dreamt. 

Without being able to stop it, he looks at the sharp silver of Levi’s eyes, glassy with whiskey, and says, “I feel as if I have known you for a thousand years.” 

It’s true. Fuck, it’s so true. He’s never known anyone like this. He’s never simply looked at a person and  _ known, _ not like this. Never in his life. He can feel a thousand tiny threads binding them together, cutting sharply into his skin. It hurts. 

He feels himself pulled in like a tide, watches Levi watching him, and puts a hand on Levi’s jaw. His skin is so soft under Erwin’s hands that it feels - almost unnatural. Erwin finds it so strange, so perfectly illustrative that Levi’s skin is so impossibly soft when his features are so sharp underneath. 

Levi’s eyes are on Erwin’s mouth, then his eyes, then all over his face. He thinks back to the wild flash of joy that had made him kiss Levi on the tower, and he thinks of Levi’s reaction. 

“This time,” Erwin murmurs, and slides his thumb over the sharp line of Levi’s jaw, “You know I mean this.”

Control stops them. Erwin curses him in every language he has ever heard or spoken. 

They fight. It is bloody, and awful, and something unfurls itself from deep inside Erwin’s chest. It is dark, and hateful, and so very, very violent. Erwin takes a savage sort of joy in shooting down the cannibals who would have touched Levi. The spray of blood across his face is almost satisfying, and some distant soft part of him is terrified by it. 

Levi is unreal. Erwin has never seen a person move so fast. Certainly not a civilian. He doesn’t even blink when he cuts them down, barely waits for their corpses to fall at his feet before he’s moving for the next one, inhumanly fast. Erwin almost kills them both, he’s so caught up staring at him. 

They work well together. They fight well together. Of course they do. They always have, and that’s an odd thought for Erwin to be struck with but it feels - right, somehow. They always have. 

It’s almost easy, the push and pull of it. The watching Levi eviscerate corpses with a frightening, godlike speed, the shooting them down over Levi’s head, the covering Levi’s back and the trusting Levi to cover his.

When it is over, and they have walked hours up the frozen riverbank, and Erwin’s feet feel cottony and clumsy under him, when they have found the cave and built the fire, Levi washes the blood off his body in the freezing water. It is a clear and blatant baptism, and Erwin turns away to the fire out of courtesy when Levi comes back in.

Levi makes a comment about how Erwin almost died, at the base, and Erwin barks a humorless laugh. He thinks of the reckless way Levi had moved, how easily and how quickly he’d cut down bodies.

_ “I _ almost di-”

His words stop solid in his chest. 

Levi is fresh from his baptism in that white water, and Erwin swears there are still parts of the river clinging to him. Even now, even in the orange light of the fire, something of the blue rushing cold of the river is trapped in Levi’s hair, slicked against the back of his neck and behind his ears, forehead bare and pale and stark. His eyelashes are stuck together with water. Erwin watches a droplet tremble on the sharp edge of Levi’s jaw before it falls to his chest, wet shirt stuck to his body in a way that makes Erwin’s whole throat burn with a blush. 

Erwin tries to stop himself from looking, from  _ longing. _ Then he stops trying. 

He kneels in front of Levi by the fire, feeling entirely out of his own body. He thinks distinctly of praying, and then in a voice that is so adoring it makes him want to hide his face he touches Levi’s soaked shirt and says, “You should take this off.” 

He undresses him slowly, amazed at how cold the river has made Levi’s skin, amazed at the rush of heat coming back into it under his fingers. 

His heart aches in his chest. It cannot contain the sight of something like this. 

Levi’s chest, his arms, his shoulders are all covered in tattoos. Dark, sharp lines across that impossibly pale skin, like ink on paper. It steals the breath from Erwin’s chest. 

He asks about some of them: the dove, for Isabel, whose name Levi calls in his sleep almost every single night. The prayer, for his mother, who Erwin has never heard Levi even mention until now and whose name makes a soft blush of pink appear across Levi’s cheeks. The gun, which Levi doesn’t explain. 

But he doesn’t ask about others. The feathers he can see curling over Levi’s shoulders. The twisting, thorny vine of flowers curling from his collarbone all the way to his forearm. The sharp black lines on the insides of his arms. 

It is all so shockingly beautiful, so completely arresting, even from this man from whom Erwin has come to expect all shockingly beautiful things. He freezes for a moment in sheer awe, fingers reverent on the soft skin of Levi’s throat.

His pulse is hammering under Erwin’s fingers, fluttering like a tiny bird. Wild, feral. Erwin suddenly aches terribly for him. 

“And what’s this?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper. Levi’s pulse does not slow. He seems to be holding his breath. The fire catches all the little droplets of water still on his chest, the curve of his neck, the hollow of his temples, the shell of his ear. It flickers yellow and gold across his sharp blue body, like sparks on a stone. 

“Fear,” Levi says, eyes like mercury on Erwin. “That’s fear.” 

Erwin’s voice comes out of his mouth of its own accord.

“Is it?” 

“No. It’s not.” 

They come together like an earthquake, a shift in the terrestrial crust of the earth. Erwin feels himself cease to exist and then restart again, molecules of his body all trembling in Levi’s direction like they’ve been pulled by a magnet. 

They have. He is distinctly magnetic, metallic, body sharp and beautiful and silver, immovable and impossible and Erwin has never been so grateful to be kneeling in his whole life. 

Levi’s hands pull desperately at Erwin’s hair once Erwin gets his mouth on him. It is a bright, grounding pain, so close to pleasure they’re almost the same thing, and Levi’s cock is impossibly warm and tastes devastatingly good, and Erwin feels his eyes fall shut.

Levi talks, something that astounds Erwin and also sears him all the way to his toes. His words filter slowly through the ringing in Erwin’s ears, almost like a dream. 

- _ feel so good, fuck, Erwin, I’m - you’re so - you look fucking - Jesus, you’re just taking it all so - oh my god  _ -

He had pictured this. Countless times, over and over in the dead of night, curled on the ground under the brilliantly starry sky with nothing separating him from Levi but a dying fire. He had imagined Levi as silent, the way he always is, maybe with the occasional gasp that he couldn’t quite hold in, and he’d imagined it so vividly that it had felt almost like a memory. 

Levi is not silent. His voice is a low, urgent murmur: ceaseless, punctuated by the occasional sharp gasp or groan, and the words he speaks set Erwin’s blood on fire. 

_ -so fucking good, Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t - your mouth is so - god, please, Erwin - _

He talks like he has no idea he’s even doing it, like he can’t help it, and his fingers are so tight in Erwin’s hair it hurts, and his whole body is trembling under Erwin’s hands, his voice low and rough and utterly broken. He only seems aware of some of the words he speaks. 

Erwin feels like his chest is going to explode. He is used to living so close to death but  _ Levi,  _ Levi had almost died so many times today, and it had nearly destroyed him. He needs him closer, and it is the only thought in his entire head as he wraps his arms around Levi’s legs and pulls him in even further, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and then sliding down to his chin at how deep Levi’s cock is down his throat - 

_ Closer _ \- 

He closes his eyes again, takes in the feel and taste and smell of him and feels something like a nuclear explosion unfurl inside his chest. 

When Levi comes it is such an unbelievable relief that Erwin feels all his energy leave him at once. It is everything to him, so vitally important that it almost hurts, and the seared remnants of Erwin’s chest crumble in on themselves when Levi loosens his hold to run careful, shaking fingers through his hair. 

They move the next day, and they find the house.

Erwin feels something in the bottom of his stomach when he looks at the house, like he’s been dreaming about it for his whole life and has only now been able to remember it. 

Levi fucks him under the shoddy wood roof until Erwin goes insane, until every part of him is screaming to be closer, to touch more _ , _ to  _ come, please, god, just -  _

Levi fucks Erwin until they are both covered in sweat, until they are both panting against each other’s skin, until the bed breaks. Erwin breaks with it, gasping and sweating and shaking and completely at Levi’s mercy, and the way Levi looks in the silver nighttime light of the open window is so -

For the hundredth time, the thousandth time, Erwin’s mind compares Levi to something holy and he comes viciously, toes curling and back arching, eyes only squeezing shut at the last minute, desperate to keep watching the cold steel moonlight in the sweat on the curve of Levi’s shoulder. 

He knows, then, with certainty that he loves him more than it should be possible to love someone. More than one lifetime could possibly collect or contain. He loves him the way someone would love across multiple lifetimes, over hundreds of years: impossibly, colossally, inescapably. Cosmically. 

He says nothing of it, of course. He only tightens his arms around Levi’s torso - he smells of white water and clean earth and sweat and something sharp and metallic, like silver - and huffs against his skin.  _ Go to sleep, Levi, _ he says, and his whole body aches when he says Levi’s name. 

That morning, he wakes to find Levi curled against his chest completely asleep. The glass of the window has long since shattered and there are holes in the roof and the soft yellow light of the morning is almost alien on Levi’s face, gold and warm.

There are tiny, almost invisibly pale freckles under Levi’s eyes, like distant stars. Erwin tightens his arms around Levi’s warm chest, soft and pink from sleep and still sticky with come, and his heart feels like it’s unfurling like a flower, like a flame. 

Levi huffs softly in his sleep. There is a mote of dust lingering in the air next to the bed, lit gold and pink by the sun, like the whole house is frozen in time. 

The moment sinks into Erwin’s skin, digs soft fingers into his brain stem and plants itself there like a tree. The house is still and quiet and smells like old wood and new morning and sex, and Levi’s clothes are thrown all over the floor, and the rise and fall of his chest in Erwin’s arms is the most singular thing in the whole of existence. He hates that he has to get up, but they need firewood and he isn’t quite ready to disturb Levi yet, so he slips silently out into the pale yellow morning.

Then he loses his arm. 

It is a blur, most of those days. He remembers the bright silver needlepoint of Levi’s voice in the haze of blood loss and shock, he remembers how hot Levi’s hands feel on his skin, how cold he is. The all-consuming terror of never seeing Levi again, followed by a sort of nebulous gut-instinct that whispers  _ not true you’ll find him you always find him.  _ Then nothing. 

Levi gives him his blood. He saves his life again, over and over. It makes Erwin dizzy, to know he is carrying so much of Levi inside himself.

He looks down at his own skin and he can feel Levi’s blood pumping under it and he swears that he will do everything in his power to survive, to save this impossible gift Levi has given him. 

They are so close to being the same thing now that Erwin couldn’t untangle them if his life depended on it. The threads are thick, inescapable. They still hurt, like before, but it’s deeper now, like an ache. 

They fight. Levi is simultaneously more and less human than Erwin has ever seen him. He moves almost in time with the lightning, bright and brilliant across the dark grey sky. 

They win. Erwin’s chest, seared on the inside from too many times spent speaking Levi’s name, gives a feeble sort of flicker, like a match flame. He tells him, because he is flooded with adrenaline and his body is too exhausted to lie and Levi is alive, he is  _ alive, _ Erwin wants to sob in relief -

“I love you.” 

He is so tired. Levi is warm against him, kneeling in the cold mud. The rain is inconsequential, except that it clings delicately to the thick curve of Levi’s eyelashes. 

“Levi.” His eyes open. Mercury, liquid and impossible and holy, always, always that mix of beautiful and terrifying that  _ must _ be holy - 

“Levi. I love you.” 

Everything after that fades to silver and blue, like the moon rising over a still lake. Erwin closes his eyes. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art.” - John Keats
> 
> Epilogue of a sun, in love with the moon.  
> Or, The Book of Erwin, verse 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already had this mostly written, and couldn’t help myself, had to include it. Have a post apocalyptic happy ending.

Erwin starts awake to the sound of someone pounding on the front door.

“Guys! Hey! Open up, it’s an emergency!”

The door isn’t exactly rickety, but it’s not the sturdiest thing in the world, and it rattles horribly on its hinges when Hanji pounds on it.

“Leviiiiiiiiii – ”

The lump of blankets next to Erwin groans, curls into Erwin’s side and says in a croaky, unused voice, “Hanji,  _ fuck off _ .”

There’s a huff from outside the door. Erwin smiles, closes his eyes and presses his face into Levi’s hair. He smells clean, like their homemade soap and that tea Armin’s been growing in his garden.

Erwin’s chest clenches at the smell of him, like it always does. He tangles their legs together under the covers.

"Maybe if we're very quiet," he whispers into Levi's hair, "they'll leave us -" 

"Erwin! This is an emergency!" 

"Alone," Erwin finishes, closing his eyes and sighing. He sits up a little and Levi turns to press his face into Erwin's side, huffing and burrowing into the blankets until his head is half on Erwin's lap.

God, Erwin loves him like this. In the mornings when he's too tired to pretend he doesn't want to touch him, Levi gets almost shockingly affectionate. 

Erwin puts his hand in Levi's hair and pushes his fingers through it, scratching gently when he gets to the short hairs at the back of his head. 

They're both ignoring Hanji. 

"I like this," he murmurs with his fingers against the undercut, "Did Jean cut it for you?" 

"Mikasa," Levi says, then hums softly and pushes his head into Erwin's hand like a cat. His eyes still haven't opened and Erwin can count all his perfect eyelashes, fanned out all dark and beautiful against his cheek. His skin is so pale, even after all the time they spend in the sun. 

He is so fucking beautiful Erwin can hardly stand it. It makes his chest ache. He wants to curl up around him and  _ squeeze _ , and he can feel himself tense at the urge to do it, to wrap his whole body around Levi's and hold him until they're both short of breath. 

"What?" Levi asks, cracking one eye open when he feels how tense Erwin's gotten. His eyes are so silver it sends a jolt through Erwin's whole body, like getting shot, or dropped from somewhere very high. 

"I love you," Erwin says by way of explanation. Levi doesn't respond except to turn onto his back so he can look up at Erwin with both eyes, head still in Erwin's lap. 

For a moment, it's just them. 

They built this cabin together, the two of them - with some help from Hanji and Eren when more than 3 hands were needed - and there is so much of Levi in it that it makes Erwin's breath stop every single morning. They had left the camp, had spent a year walking and then they had been drawn back here like magnets. 

Levi had built him a skylight in the bedroom, had mumbled something about sunlight and Erwin's eyelashes that Erwin hadn't entirely understood, and the thin, cold morning light pours through it now, touches Levi's cheeks and filters through his irises until his eyes look like mercury, like the moon. 

Levi had hung six different kinds of tea leaves from the skylight to dry in bundles, and the whole room smells like him now: clean and earthy and almost sweet. Erwin loves him so recklessly that it feels a bit like jumping headfirst off a cliff every time he looks at him, though whenever he comes close to voicing that sentiment Levi just rolls his eyes and blushes to the back of his neck. 

He'd felt it that first day. The first moment Levi had come to him, had stood on the top of that water tower and stared at him with those  _ eyes _ , god, like looking at condensed starlight, Erwin had felt it. 

He already knew him. He just couldn't remember how. 

He knows now, of course. Their legs are still tangled under the sheets and he knows, now. They've known each other for a thousand years. They've always been tangled together. 

Levi seems to be thinking the same thing - frightening, almost, how often that happens - because he mutters very softly with his eyes still on Erwin, "I'll never be rid of you, will I?"

This is how Levi says it. Every morning, Erwin presses their bodies together and whispers  _ I love you, I love you, I would die for you, I've killed for you, I would do it again _ and Levi says _ Destroyer, I'll never be rid of you, I'm ruined, you bastard, how dare you.  _

The scope of it, the fear in Levi's voice, the clear and honest openness and devastation there, it skins Erwin alive. 

Hanji had asked him once, drunk in front of the camp's fall bonfire, if he resented Levi for never telling Erwin he loved him. 

_ But he does _ , he'd said, confused.  _ He tells me every day. _

"Never," Erwin says. “You’ll never be rid of me.” 

Levi makes a sound particular to him, one Erwin has never heard another person make. Like a purr, almost. A soft, low, vibrating hum that warms Erwin all the way to his toes.   

"Erwin! I hear you talking in there I know you're awake!" 

The low rumbling in Levi's chest stops and he sits up abruptly, yells while scratching at the back of his head, "Hanji, goddamn it!" 

Hanji's voice gets petulant. "It's  _ cold  _ out here." 

Erwin looks at Levi and shrugs. His shoulder buzzes uncomfortably from it. He can still feel his arm, sometimes. Like now. He can feel it making a very tight fist, all tensed up on pins and needles, like he can't unclench his fingers. 

It's a terrible feeling, but he touches the back of Levi's neck and it eases. Levi's skin is warm from sleep, so soft it almost hurts Erwin's fingers to touch it. 

Levi hates hearing that - how soft he is. Erwin's stopped telling him. But it's true. His skin makes Erwin's stomach clench when he touches it; it makes him dizzy. It feels like warm silk, fine and expensive under Erwin's fingers. It's no wonder it scars so easily. 

Levi swings his legs out of bed and Erwin grips the back of his neck a little harder, pulls him back to kiss him on the mouth. 

Levi sighs very quietly and Erwin kisses him again, then he kisses Levi's cheekbone, then his temple, then the fine silver scar cutting his eyebrow - Erwin keeps to himself how much he loves that one - then his eyelid. 

The door rattles again. 

"If you two are having sex while I'm  _ freezing  _ out here -" 

Levi touches his forehead against Erwin's and huffs, then gets up and heads for the door. 

"I'm coming, you obnoxious little -" 

"Levi," Erwin hisses, trying not to laugh. 

He turns and Erwin can't help looking at him: standing in the doorway of the house he  _ built  _ for Erwin with his own hands, sleep-soft face lit by the cool blue light of the morning fog, all his tattoos stark black against his pale skin, all his scars running over or under them in thin silver lines. 

"You're  _ naked _ ," Erwin says. Levi looks down as if surprised. 

"Oh, right." 

Hanji pounds on the door again and Levi grumbles while he pulls on one of Erwin's shirts, "Hold your horses, four eyes." 

Erwin's very sad to see Levi's torso go, but the sight of him in Erwin's t-shirt - too big for him, soft and worn against his skin - makes something seize up in his chest. 

"You might want to put on underwear," Erwin adds, almost reluctantly. Levi catches his tone and raises an eyebrow at him, but pulls on a pair of sweatpants that actually fit him. 

When he opens the door, Hanji tumbles in, shivering. They're carrying a basket and there's a scarf wrapped around their head. 

"It's not that cold," Levi says, turning away from the door and sitting back on the bed. Erwin still hasn't moved. He's transfixed by how Levi looks next to the window; he can't stop looking at him. The weather is too good to him - the fog is soft and cool and grey, rolling over the grass and leaving little silver droplets all over the ground. It makes his hair look darker, makes his skin practically  _ glow  _ like the moon. It suits him. 

"Says the asshole with the woodstove," Hanji shoots back. They set their basket down on the bedside table. "Plus, I walked all the way here. It's  _ far _ , you know. Took almost an hour. You didn’t have to build your house all the way at the edge of camp." 

Levi immediately says, “Yes, we did.” 

"It's good for you," Erwin says, grinning a little. He's naked too, but the bedsheets are at least covering anything - scandalous. Not that Hanji doesn't know entirely too much about him already.

Levi's quicksilver eyes go very, very warm on Erwin's naked chest for a moment before he throws a shirt at Erwin's face.

"Don't tempt me," Levi murmurs under his breath, and Erwin can't stop the grin that spreads across his face when he pulls the shirt on.

"If you're done being disgusting," Hanji says, voice far too bright for how early it is, "I have news." 

"Emergency?" Levi asks, settling on the end of the bed with his feet crossed under him. He leans backwards against Erwin's legs a little and Erwin feels the almost overpowering desire to touch him.

Hanji grins and pulls something out of the basket. 

It's - a fruit? 

It's huge, vaguely round and the size of a football, and it's a shocking, vibrant sort of purple on the outside.

Levi scrunches up his face and scowls at it, and it's so adorable that Erwin laughs at him, just a little. He can't help it. 

Levi gives him a look and says, "What? It looks - dangerous." 

"Irradiated is what I was going to say," Erwin says, still smiling at how violently Levi's scowling at the fruit. 

Hanji sighs very loudly. "Open your  _ minds _ , guys." They hold it up to the skylight, inspecting it with something very like pride in their face. "I've been having all sorts of issues with mutations, you know." 

Levi nods, shivering. Erwin grins - he's remembering the strawberry Hanji made Levi taste a few months ago. Levi had said it tasted like  _ milk _ , which was the most disgusting thing Erwin had ever heard, so he'd refused when it was offered to him. 

Since then, the two of them had very staunchly avoided any and all of Hanji's ... experiments. 

"The soil is chemically very different now than before the ... incident," Hanji says, and Erwin knows this. They've already talked about it. "There are only a few things that grow like they used to -"

"Four eyes, we  _ know _ ," Levi cuts in. His body heat is warming Erwin's toes. "Get to the point." 

Hanji holds up the horrible purple blob. "Potegplant." 

Levi and Erwin share a look. 

"Poteg-"

"Potegplant." 

Hanji grins, then holds out something else from the basket. Like a pancake, but - purple. Bright purple. 

"Try it," they say, just as forcefully as usual. "Do it." 

Erwin eyes the thing warily, sees Levi doing the same.

Then, after a moment, Hanji adds, "Sasha made it." 

Levi pounces  _ immediately _ , lunges forward and grabs the pancake with both hands. Erwin reaches for him, huffing a little laugh as Levi struggles to keep the pancake out of Erwin's reach. He even sees a tiny smile at the corner of Levi's lips before he shoves the whole pancake in his mouth, giving Erwin a very smug look. 

Erwin watches him curiously, studies the expression on his face and lets himself admire just how  _ beautiful  _ Levi is in silence for a few minutes. There's a tiny freckle on the side of Levi's neck that Erwin's never noticed before. 

"Oh, shit." 

All eyes are on him now. Hanji looks very hopeful. Erwin can't stop grinning. Levi swallows and announces, "Fuckin' delicious." 

Hanji claps their hands together and squeals, overjoyed. Levi looks ... confused. 

"What the hell  _ is  _ that?" 

Hanji says, "Potegplant!" 

Levi smacks his lips. "It tastes like ... a giant hashbrown. Sort of." 

Hanji nods. "It's got as much protein as an eggplant, though. Hence the name. Well, that and the color." 

Erwin feels his eyes widen. "And these are easy to grow?" 

Hanji nods. "Like weeds." 

Erwin sees now why this had been categorized as an  _ emergency _ . This is huge. This means - they might not have to keep scouting for food. No more hunting, no more venturing further and further outside the walls for meat. They might be able to grow everything here. Armin had already gotten most of the herbs to grow, and Levi and Erwin had some greens and a few strains of tea leaves in their backyard, and the only hangup had been protein, but - 

"Hanji, this is  _ wonderful _ ," Erwin says, and he means it. 

Hanji nods. "Yeah. That's all I had, though. Of the pancakes, I mean. I've got plenty of potegplants. Oh! I should probably mention -" 

Someone knocks on the door.

Erwin glances at Levi, who shrugs. His shoulders just sort of wiggle a little. He looks so relaxed, it makes Erwin’s heart ache. 

Levi's been so different since they built this house. So much ... looser. Like he'd been carrying around a great weight and was finally able to shrug it off. Erwin thought, after the Titans and the arm and that - fight - that he couldn't have possibly loved Levi any more. 

But it had been three years since then, and every single day the set of Levi's scarred, sturdy shoulders relaxed just a little more, and every day his scars faded, and every day Levi was just a little quicker to smile, and every single day Erwin thought,  _ I didn't even know what love was until now.  _

He looks at him, at that dark, dark hair falling in his eyes, at the way the pink on his cheeks and the pale freckles over his nose look like a sunrise in winter, and he thinks it again.  _ Just yesterday, I had no idea. I had no idea I could love this much.  _

Someone knocks on the door again. Levi turns away from Erwin - they'd just been staring at each other and he hadn't even noticed - and glares at Hanji. 

"What did you do." 

Hanji gets up, deposits the basket of  _ potegplants  _ on the kitchen counter and yells, "I invited some people over for pancakes. Erwin, put some pants on." 

“Four eyes,” Levi says, voice dangerously low in a way that raises the hairs on Erwin’s arm, “Are you aware this isn’t your fucking house?”

“Huh?”

Erwin snorts and pulls on a pair of pants, runs a hand through his hair and sighs. Levi turns to look at him.

“Baby?”

Erwin feels himself blush warmly. He loves it when Levi calls him that.

“Mm.”

“You good?”

“Not exactly presentable,” Erwin says, sighing again. Someone’s still knocking at the door and Hanji yells, “Erwin, are you decent?”

Levi steps very close and goes up on his toes to kiss him.

“Beautiful,” Levi murmurs in a voice he must  _ know  _ Erwin can’t resist. It sends a hot shiver all the way down his spine. Levi kisses him again, runs his hands through Erwin’s hair and adds, “You fucker.”

Erwin grins. He wants nothing more than to let Levi push him back into bed and climb on top of him, but the knocking is getting very incessant now. Levi’s eyes don’t leave his when he says, “Yeah, Hanji, he’s good.”

Erwin nods.

The house explodes with noise.

Somehow, Erwin ends up sitting at their kitchen table – carved with a sun, by Levi for Erwin, and a moon, by Erwin for Levi – stuffing his face with some sort of greasy, salty pancake and laughing with his arm slung over Levi’s shoulders. They’re both sitting in the same chair, but there still isn’t room, so Armin, the new kids Jean and Connie, and Hanji are all crammed against the little table with their knees all knocked together, and Eren and Mikasa are sitting on the kitchen counter while Sasha cooks.

He didn’t realize, of course, that they were a family until they already were. He’s not sure Levi has realized it yet.

“Eren,” Levi says, “Get your filthy feet off my countertop.”

Well, maybe he has a little.

It’s well past noon now, and the fog has burned away to reveal a blinding winter sun that bathes the whole cabin in brilliant yellow light. They’d made sure to build their house with as many windows as they could manage, just for this.

Mikasa says something in the same low voice as Levi and someone throws a pancake at her – it might be Armin, but Erwin’s too focused on the tiny smile on Levi’s face to really notice anything else.

“No throwing food in my house, you shitting  _ brats _ -”

But he’s laughing, in his way. His voice has no real violence to it, and the set of his shoulders and the curve of his back are slumped happily against Erwin’s chest in their shared chair, and he’s still got that perfect, devastating curve to his mouth.

That smile makes Levi’s whole face go just a little softer, makes those little wrinkles at the corners of Levi’s eyes crinkle up, and something about it changes the shape of his jaw and the color of his eyes and Erwin is suddenly seized by such a desperate, overwhelming desire for him that it makes his hands shake.

Levi looks at him then, and their faces are so close. Erwin always feels like it’s the first time, when he looks at him like this.

“What?”

Erwin just leans down and whispers in his ear, very, very softly, “Lee.”

Levi understands, of course. They always understand each other. His whole face goes pink, the back of his neck is red and hot where Erwin touches it. He can see the blush creeping all the way down Levi’s throat until it disappears down his borrowed shirt.

“Y’all,” Eren says from the counter, making a face. “Y’all.”

“I’d leave,” Jean says, getting up and snatching a frying pancake straight out of the pan despite Sasha’s protests, “But it’s the middle of fucking winter and I don’t want to.”

Wait.

“What day is it?” Erwin asks, and Levi looks at him and scowls all the sudden.

With his mouth completely full of pancakes, Eren spreads two greasy hands and yells, “Merry fuckin’ Christmas!” at the top of his lungs.

Levi scowls and murmurs, “Wash your hands, fuck,” but he turns his face into Erwin’s chest. He’s blushing. He already knows why Erwin’s asked.

Erwin wraps his arm around him and pulls Levi close to his chest, breathing in the soap-and-tea smell of him and reveling in the softness of his hair and skin, and says very quietly, “I won’t say anything.”

Levi relaxes.

“Thanks.”

“Yo, what are they whispering about over there?”

Hanji barks a laugh, loud and brash and a spray of half-chewed pancake hits the kitchen table. “I doubt you impressionable young minds want to know!”

Eren wipes his hands off on Mikasa’s shirt and grimaces. “Y’all.”

Levi leans over and hits Hanji across the back of the head. “Shut up, Four-Eyes.”

Someone passes a plate of pancakes to the table, and Erwin sighs into Levi’s hair again and watches: the light in the house is so soft, bright and cool, and the woodstove is warm where it crackles in the corner of the kitchen. There’s laughing, and yelling, and old, old Christmas carols sung that people have forgotten most of the words to, and the house smells like food and fire and Levi, and they pass hours that way.

By the time Levi gets up – he’d migrated to a big rocking chair during the second course of the pancake feeding frenzy – the sky is heavy and grey, like a solid ceiling of cold that’s just a bit too low.

“Alright,” Levi says, and Eren, Mikasa and Armin groan collectively from their place on the floor next to the woodstove.

“Levi, come on –”

“Nope.” Levi looks at Erwin and his eyes go the color of soft charcoal, the sort Erwin’s father had used to draw with. “Everybody out.”

“It’s warm in here –”

“Come on, it’s Christmas –”

“It takes  _ hours _ to get here from town-”

“I’m so full, I don’t want to  _ walk _ –”

Levi wraps a blanket around his own shoulders and throws open the door. A huge gust of freezing air rushes into the little cabin.

_ “Out,  _ you freeloaders.”

They all file out with only minimal complaining, Sasha bumping her fist gently against Erwin’s and giving him a grin before grabbing the remaining pancakes and heading out the door. Hanji wraps Levi up in a hug. He rolls his eyes, but his arms wrap around their torso all the same.

Erwin’s heart gives a little squeeze again.

“Merry Christmas, grumpy,” Hanji says, and kisses him on the cheek. “Love you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Levi’s got a tiny little blush on his nose, the sort he always gets whenever anyone but Erwin shows him affection. “Go on.”

“Bye, Erwin.”

“Merry Christmas, Hanji.”

Then the door closes and they’re alone.

Erwin’s wrapped in a blanket too – they’d put Armin in charge of the woodstove but he wasn’t quiet as good at it as Erwin was, so the house had gotten cold – and he holds his hand out to Levi with the blanket still draped on his shoulders.

“Come here.”

Levi looks wary. His eyes are silver again. Erwin loves him so much it makes the arches of his feet tingle.

“I don’t trust you right now.”

Erwin feels himself grin. “What? Me?”

Levi rolls his eyes but they’re smiling, just a little.

Erwin shrugs his shoulders and the blanket slides down. “Come on,” he says, knowing this’ll work, “Hurry and grab the other side of this blanket before you make me drop it.”

Levi huffs, latches the lock on the door and fits himself against Erwin’s chest, grumbling something unintelligible. Erwin kisses the top of his head.

“Thanks.”

“Fuckin’ sap.”

They stand there for a long time, wrapped in the same blanket. Levi’s feet are bare and he shuffles forward to stand on Erwin’s socked ones, toes freezing through the fabric. It starts to snow outside, and the woodstove crackles pleasantly in the kitchen.

It’s been so long now, since they met. So long. The woods around the cabin are so familiar, the way the wind whistles through the few cracks they’d missed when they built it almost … comforting. This is theirs. This belongs to them.

There is such a sense of peace that it makes Erwin’s whole body feel unnaturally warm, makes his stomach clench up pleasantly like he’s going to laugh. Levi’s arms tighten to almost painful around his chest, and he rubs his face against Erwin’s shirt.

After a long time, Erwin speaks.

“Happy birthday, Levi.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love you all.

**Author's Note:**

> love you all.


End file.
